A01=Michael Collier
abuse
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
attachment
Author_Michael Collier
automatic-update
belonging
betrayal
bishop
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCF
catholic priest
catholicism
christianity
collection
comfort
conflict
contemporary
COP=United States
courage
death
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
disgrace
doubt
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
faith
forgiveness
friendship
grief
healing
human connection
intimacy
Language_English
literature
longing
loss
molestation
PA=Available
pain
pedophile
poetry
power
Price_€20 to €50
prose poems
PS=Active
redemption
relationships
religion
rites
ritual
sexual assault
SN=Phoenix Poets
softlaunch
spirituality
survivor
terror
transcendence
trust
unpredictability
Product details
- ISBN 9780226570860
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Aug 2018
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Think of a time when you've feigned courage to make a friend, feigned forgiveness to keep one, or feigned indifference to simply stay out of it. What does it mean for our intimacies to fail us when we need them most?
The poems of this collection explore such everyday dualities-how the human need for attachment is as much a source of pain as of vitality and how our longing for transcendence often leads to sinister complicities. The title poem tells the conflicted and devastating story of the poet's friendship with the now-disgraced Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, interweaving fragments of his parents' funerals, which the Bishop concelebrated, with memories of his childhood spiritual leanings and how they were disrupted by a pedophilic priest the Bishop failed to protect him from.
This meditation on spiritual life, physical death, and betrayal is joined by an array of poised, short lyrics and expansive prose poems exploring how the terror and unpredictability of our era intrudes on our most intimate moments. Whether Collier is writing about an airline disaster, Huey Newton's trial, Thomas Jefferson's bees, a piano in the woods, or his own fraught friendship with the disgraced Catholic Bishop, his syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail, and flawless ear bring the felt-and sometimes frightening-dimensions of the mundane to life. Throughout, this collection pursues a quiet but ferocious need to get to the bottom of things.
